Ireland’s advertising watchdog has provisionally found that Ryanair misled customers by promoting flights to Dakhla, a city in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, as a "Moroccan adventure".
The Advertising Standards Authority said Dakhla was "not a part of Morocco" and recommended that the campaign should not appear again as it is framed currently, according to a preliminary decision dated 12 October seen by The Irish Times.
In promotional emails sent by the Irish budget airline in March, Dakhla was described as a destination "where ocean, desert, and culture come together" and a place where visitors can “explore Moroccan culture up close".
The findings still require approval from the authority’s independent council, which will decide whether to uphold a complaint brought by Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan.
Boylan had complained that presenting the coastal city as Moroccan was misleading, saying it "erases indigenous people by showing the city as belonging to Morocco".
According to The Irish Times, Ryanair’s submission read it did not intend to describe the destination as "expressing any political stance".
Dakhla is a city on the Atlantic coast of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that remains listed by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory. Its unresolved status is at the heart of a decades-long conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front.
Morocco has occupied most of Western Sahara since 1975 and considers it part of its national territory.
The Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks independence and a referendum allowing the indigenous Sahrawi people to determine the territory’s future.